


I'll be next to you when it all fall through

by frith_in_thorns



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Nobody Dies, Dissociation, F/M, Inadvisable alcohol consumption, Multi, PTSD, actually holidays are often quite stressful, being fine is situational, some holidays are better in theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 12:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12432504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: She's trying her best, he can see that at the airport as she forces away her military posture and buys herself a novel at a kiosk to read on the flight. She checks and rechecks her phone, and grimaces as she sees him looking.Minkowski's been doing fine. She has her crew to look after.Without them, maybe not so much.





	I'll be next to you when it all fall through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thought](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/gifts).
  * Inspired by [You Crash Standing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053763) by [thought](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought). 



> I wrote this because Thought's fabulous fic [You Crash Standing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053763), a post-mission AU where Hilbert and Maxwell are still alive and everyone moves into a slightly dysfunctional house in Geneva together, burrowed into my brain and knocked this idea loose. She very generously allowed me to write in her 'verse.

It sounded like a good idea, in principle. A mini-break, just the two of them, because god knows they haven't really done any of that "reconnecting as a couple" stuff yet, and it's been months now. Sure, the relationship advice blogs Dom's been checking out on the internet don't have much to say about your presumed-dead wife bringing home a whole houseful of traumatised misfits with her, and then bringing one of them into your marital bed, but that's the sort of minor detail you just have to take into account.

Renée has to buy everything new. Actually, Dom does most of it for her, because she half-heartedly looks at a few Amazon pages and then never gets round to going back. He goes as plain as possible, but gets options. Black swimsuit, black bikini, khaki shorts, sunglasses, neutral teeshirts, flip-flops. He's pretty sure Isabel packs for her but he doesn't ask, because he'd like to maintain the illusion that his wife isn't being _entirely_ cajoled into spending time with him one-on-one.

She's trying her best, he can see that at the airport as she forces away her military posture and buys herself a novel at a kiosk to read on the flight. She checks and rechecks her phone, and grimaces as she sees him looking.

"Here," she says, brusquely, and shoves it at him.

"You're allowed to be on your phone," Dom says. "It's normal."

"No — take it." She forces it on him. "Please. Don't give it back to me."

Dom takes it, somewhat reluctantly. "Can you clarify?" he asks. "Are you giving it to me purely because not being on your phone fits into your mental picture of what a holiday should be like, or because you actually want to? And when _should_ I give it back?"

She gives him a quick, tight smile. She's always appreciated having proper parameters. "I can't stop waiting for one of them to message me," she admits. "I think, for there to be any point to us going away at all, you should keep it for at least 24 hours. Excluding emergencies. And you've got your phone, right?"

"Of course," he says. He has two texts from Isabel already, demanding travel updates, and also demanding he not tell Renée of their existence.

"Okay," Renée says. "I mean, good. Everything's good."

They're first in line at their boarding call, and Renée stares transfixed out of the window as the Alps drop away below them. It's only a short flight to Crete, which Dom picked because of the blend of natural beauty and tourism. They won't stand out.

They're both travelling on their EU passports, so the border barely delays them. Still, Renée looks drained by the time they reach their hotel. "You want a quiet evening in?" Dom suggests. They have a balcony with a table and chairs; a good place to share a bottle of wine in the late afternoon.

Renée hesitates, then shakes her head. "We're on _holiday_ ," she says. "We shouldn't hide in here."

 _You don't need to prove anything,_ Dom thinks, but it would be futile to say that out loud.

They go out, Renée wearing a plain green shirt and a black skirt that were both part of Dom's pre-holiday purchases. (She doesn't show any surprise when she searches in her suitcase, so maybe she _was_ the one who packed it after all.) They find a bar with a dance floor, one containing mostly tourists but also enough locals to be reassuring. There's a live band, which Dom can see Renée likes. 

She perches on a bar stool and orders for them both in bad Greek, which makes the barman laugh out loud and pour her a free shot of some local aniseed speciality. Dom can smell it from where he's sitting and immediately writes it off as disgusting, but he's also survived New Year's Eve with Renée's parents and their circle of Polish friends so he isn't at all surprised that she doesn't share his opinion and even asks for more.

It's a good band, even. They play the sun down. Renée shows no sign of wanting to move on, and Dom just wants to do what makes her happy.

"Would you like to dance?" he asks.

Her shoulders tense, and he mentally kicks himself for spoiling things. 

She makes herself relax. "You go," she says.

"Really? Without you?"

"I'll watch," she says. And, when he hesitates, "Really. I want to watch you have a good time."

"You're having a good time too, aren't you?" he asks, anxiously.

She smiles. "Yes, of course." Then, as the shape of her lips begin to lose focus, "Please. You're hovering."

He'd argue, except that it's true. So he dances with a pair of local women twice his age who find him a terribly entertaining if not especially competent partner (he's used to that), and with a tipsy British man who keeps unsubtly flirting with him, and with the two older ladies again. When the band eventaully comes to a break they take turns kissing his cheeks enthusiastically and feign outrage that he's already in possession of a wife.

He's looked over at Renée every chance he's had, and she's been watching him and smiling and occasionally raising a glass to him. She's still smiling when he approaches her again, and it's only when he's very close that he can see how vacant that expression is.

"Do you think it's time to head back?" he asks.

She looks at him, puts her feet down to the floor, tips her weight down onto them, and keeps falling as her knees give way.

Dom only just catches her before she hits the floor. She hangs like a dead weight on his shoulder. "Renée!" he says, alarmed, and pushes her off, supporting her with is hands so he can get a proper look at her — has her drink been spiked? is she ill?

Her face is closed off. So is the rest of her. Dom looks up and sees the barman wince, but not in a surprised sort of way. So, probably neither of his immediate fears is true, and yeah, there's the smell of that spirit pouring off her.

"Renée, can you get up? How much did you have to drink?"

She doesn't answer, but with his help she grimly makes it to her feet, and he gets his arm under hers to support her. She needs it, badly, because as far as he can tell her sense of balance has vanished, but she compensates by leaning heavily on him.

It's a warm Mediterranean night, haphazardly lit by bulb-lights strung from awnings and the occasional street lamp struggling to compete. "Are you okay?" he asks, and she's silent. Stupid question.

She's silent all the way back to the hotel. She's passive, letting his steps guide hers, which is in no way reassuring given who she is. He keeps trying to talk to her, to fill the silence with some chatter, but she doesn't even rebuff him. Everything he says just drops away, like stones into deep water.

In the hotel room he walks her to one of the armchairs and presses her to sit down. She does. "I'm going to get you some water, okay?" he says, and by now doesn't wait for her non-answer.

She is completely… shuttered. Her arms are loose by her sides, and her face is blank, but somehow the overall effect is that she's retreated deep into herself. He hasn't seen this before. He's seen her drunk, but not… this.

It's an effort to cross the floor back towards her. Like he's forcing himself through some invisible barrier she's projecting. "Drink this," he says, handing her a large glass of water, and she takes it and sips it automatically. He sits on the edge of the other armchair and watches her drink it all without making eye contact with him, or apparently noticing him in any way. Then when she's finished with it he pulls the glass from her unresisting fingers because he's afraid she'll just let it fall and smash on the wooden floorboards.

"Let's get you to bed," he says. She doesn't react, of course, so he takes her hands and pulls until she comes unsteadily to her feet. He guides her over to the bed, and unzips her skirt and eases it past her hips, and, when she's sitting down, takes her sandals off. She remains sitting on the side of the mattress until he physically makes her lie down and tucks the sheet over her.

He lies awake next to a void.

-

He must sleep, eventually, because he wakes up at the sounds of first a crash, and then of Renée being violently sick.

Dom has a brief fight with the bedside lamp. He wins, and finds Renée on hands and knees on the floor, listing sideways.

"God," he says, and hoists her up, steering her carefully around the mess. She's shivering, and clammy with sweat. "Renée…"

The brighter lights of the bathroom are unforgiving. Her skin is greenly translucent. He tosses a folded towel to the floor and guides her to sit on it like a cushion. Her teeth are beginning to chatter, and he drapes another large towel around her shoulders. "I'm not going to ask how you're feeling," he says, and that still draws no reaction, until she convulses and leans forward to throw up again into the toilet.

"I'm going to get you more water," Dom says. He doesn't want to leave her for even a few minutes. He fetches a large plastic tumbler from the kitchenette and also stops to clean up the mess on the floorboards.

When he comes back, Renée is pillowed on her arms on the edge of the bath. The towel has slipped down from her shoulders, and Dom readjusts it. "I know you probably don't want to, but you need to drink this," he says.

She takes the water, grimaces for the first few mouthfuls, eventually drinks half of it. That does for now. She sags back when he takes the tumbler off her.

"Renée," he says, half-hopeful.

She's still so blank. He'd thought it was down to being black-out drunk, but the much scarier thought is maybe it's _not_. That the alcohol was just a catalyst to get to whatever-the-hell this is.

He's deathly afraid, suddenly, that she might never come back.

No. That's ridiculous. She wouldn't do that, not when she's got people depending on her.

People. Her crew. He's never felt _jealous_ like this of them.

Renée throws most of the water back up, and he makes her drink more. She keeps on shivering. He adds another towel to the one on her shoulders, tucking it around her. 

"I really want you to start talking to me," he says. "I'm trying to be patient, I really am, but I'm also really worried, and I have no idea right now about how to _help_ you. Can you just give me _something_? Acknowledge that I'm here?"

Nothing.

"Minkowski!" he snaps, not expecting that to work either.

She jolts, tries to scramble upwards, spasms and tips, winds up on the floor in a loud clatter and tangle of limbs and suddenly ragged breathing.

"Shit, Renée, I'm sorry, it's just me —" Dom pulls her towards him, turning her. She goes from taut to limp again halfway through. She's paler (if that's possible), and he can no linger kid himself that she's just sick from the alcohol.

And he'd love that to come come alongside more helpful insights, but it doesn't.

What he _can_ see, though, is that despite his piling towels on her she's still freezing, and her shirt is entirely sodden through with sweat. "I'm going to get you in a hot shower," he says. "You might feel better." He'd run a bath, but he's afraid of her face slipping under the water.

It's a sitting-down shower, obviously. He gets her in there and crouches just outside, getting warm spray on him while she bunches up against a corner, arms around her knees. Head hanging down.

It takes him a long time to recognise that she's crying, heaving with sobs. Silent, or as good as, swallowed in the torrent of water.

He's never, ever seen her cry before.

He should — well. What?

He's sick of his own passiveness, but he has no idea what to do. He waits.

She's the one to reach and turn the water off in the end, which startles him into hope. She stumbles out, but her expression is still lost and it would be too much to expect her to come back all at once, really.

He doesn't try to talk, now. He gives her silence instead. He gives her a hand, a shoulder, her pyjamas, a mattress edge, a blanket. She folds into the bed, vanishing into the sheets.

He puts a fresh cup of water on the bedside table. Then adds her phone. _24 hours or an emergency,_ right.

At least it feels more like there's a person lying next to him, this time.

-

He sleeps in, unsurprisingly. Renée is quiet in a mound of blankets and sheets, and she definitely needs the sleep even more than he did, so Dom does his best not to disturb her as he gets up and takes a long shower. Then he tosses the towels on the floor into the laundry hamper, and after that he has no more reasons to put off going to check on her.

She isn't asleep. She's curled up in something resembling a nest, phone propped up in front of her. With… a video chat open, to Isabel, who is watching her through the screen and also saying nothing.

Isabel notices him, and then Renée looks around too. There are bruise-shadows under her eyes. It stabs Dom deep inside, sharp with relief, to be _seen_. She glances back to Isabel, then abruptly slides out of bed. Dom automatically braces, but she's carrying her own weight, and disappears into the bathroom mostly steadily. The lock-click is decisive.

Isabel leans her chin in her hands. "Hi," she says. "You look pretty rough too."

Dom gestures after Renée. "Did she talk to you?"

"Mmm, kind of. I think I got the gist." 

This isn't a conversation Dom can have in this close, curtained room. He goes out onto the balcony instead, takes a seat on one of the chairs. "I thought she was…" he begins, then trails off helplessly, not sure which of several ways he wants that sentence to go.

"We're all fucked up," Isabel says.

"Yeah, I noticed. But I didn't think… I didn't know what to do."

"I don't know why you're looking at me like I'm hiding the Renée Minkowski manual under a couch somewhere. I thought she was doing pretty okay, relatively speaking. I didn't realise it was so situational."

Dom processes that, pictures himself having put his foot down and refused to house his wife's collection of damaged misfits. Stops picturing it. "Any more advice from your manual?"

Isabel shrugs. "Never play chicken with her. That's my main one."

Dom sighs.

"I'm serious. Don't. That includes feelings-chicken. She'll outlast anyone."

There's nothing he can say to counter that.

He hears Renée's footsteps crossing the floor inside. "I guess I should go," Dom says. "I'll see you soon."

"Day after tomorrow," Isabel confirms. "Unless you think I should fly out there?"

It's momentarily tempting. He's still doubting himself, still afraid. But it's not like shifting this problem onto Isabel will solve it for him. "I think we'll be okay," he says. "Well, I hope so."

"Of course you will," Isabel says. "You're one of her people too, Dom."

They wrap up the call. He heads inside.

Renée sits on the edge of the bed drinking water, her hair tousled and damp. She glances at him, looks away, looks back at him with more purpose. Holds his eyes.

He goes to her. 

She lies back down on top of the sheets and he lies next to her, and she wriggles up against him. He puts an arm over her.

They're both quiet for a long time.

Renée clears her throat. "Are you okay?" she half-whispers.

"I will be," Dom says. Her head jerks against his chin as she nods. Yes. Of course she understands. "And you?"

"I have such a headache," she grumbles, and Dom laughs. With some effort he doesn't also cry.

-

They're still technically on holiday, as Renée says the next day with some of the same determination she began this project with. Dom recruits a local taxi driver to take them to a beach they can have to themselves, and to pick them up again later. 

What they find is barely big enough to be called a beach. It's a tiny cove, pristine. Just them, the sea, the sky.

Renée chose the swimsuit from the options provided, approved of the neutral black. She floats on her back in the startling blueness of the Aegean.

Dom treads water next to her. "You miss it, don't you?" 

She closes her eyes. Suspended, weightless. "Oh, yes," she breathes. 

They float beneath the deep blue sky, and Dom would turn it black for her if he could. But he's also so glad, so selfishly glad, that she's down here instead, with him.


End file.
